10 Marketing Mistakes To Avoid At All Costs!

10 Marketing Mistakes To Avoid At All Costs!

We all make mistakes but some of them can be fatal to your business if you’re not careful. So try to avoid making these:

1. No market research – Just because something feels ‘like a good idea’ or ‘I developed it because my friend or family like it’ and then not being able to find a route to market is a fatal mistake. You really do need to test out your potential market place and potential product BEFORE you spend a lot of time and money in developing it fully. You can find out what people are looking for on forums and chat sites online very easily. Join in the conversation and ask the questions you need answers to that way.

2. No Marketing Plan – A marketing plan is crucial even if you never bother with a business plan, don’t skip this. A marketing plan lists the strategies you will use to reach your customers to sell your products and services. When this is not in place you will be working randomly, inconsistent and probably ineffective aswell. Set out a step by step marketing plan for each of your products and services.

3. No set goals – Without having a set goal in mind your marketing efforts won’t have direction. You need to set goals that are achievable within a set timeframe and have a monetary aspect to them. You need to attach how many leads, referrals and clients you want to achieve from each of your marketing efforts. These all need to be tracked so you know exactly what is being achieved and what isn’t so you can adjust for your next marketing effort.

4. No Idea of your actual customer – You might think your product or service is great for everyone but when you try and speak to everyone you end up speaking to no-one. You need to focus on a niche market and even a ‘niche within a niche’ with a very strong message that speaks only to them. You may need to set up more than one place to direct people to in order to get your message across to the different niches you have identified.

5. Niche is too small – Sometimes you can make your niche too small so you’re not reaching enough potential customers. Having a small niche is great if the price of your product or service is so high that it doesn’t matter if only one or two people buy from you. On the other hand if your niche is so small that only a few potential people qualify, then you need to widen your niche.

6. Selling to the wrong audience – You can have the best product or service in the world but if you are trying to sell it to the wrong people who can’t afford your product or service then you will soon go out of business. Find your groups of carefully. Look to see where your ideal customer is currently residing and start to make contact that way.

7. Copying others – Copying advertisements or other marketing efforts which others have carried out without knowing the results they have achieved is another common marketing mistake. Just because people are placing advertisements or distributing leaflets in publications doesn’t mean it is actually working. You need to model yourself on those who already know what’s working and then make it your own.

8. Marketing stops for delivery – many people stop marketing once they have brought sales in so they can deliver the service. Of course, this leads to ‘feast or famine’ as sales dry up when no marketing is taking place. You need to have a marketing system in place so that marketing continues even when you’re delivering your services.

9. Searching for new customers – while ignoring the ones you’ve already got in your sales funnel. It takes more than 10 times the effort and expense to bring in a new lead whereas you can easily convert past clients with new product lines. So look for ways that you can expand what you’ve already delivered to people and give them a call.

10. Not systemising – your follow-on process when you bring leads into your business. There needs to be a system in place taking your prospect into a paying customer and then into repeat paying customer. This all needs to operate as an automated system.